Tyler, I agree composer is a great tool if you can run it. And I agree most extensions that need be installed via composer can be done without, but how clear is that to the average Mediawiki website operator? Put yourself in the shoes of someone who runs a Wordpress site and than also tries to run a Mediawiki site. The learning curve is a lot higher and there is a lot of confusion in the process. Francis, in the earlier thread, said users like him maybe were the minority (those who don't have command access), but the reality is over 70% of all third party users to Mediawiki do not upgrade -- so the majority is being left behind.
Somethings will always be complex, but surely Mediawiki could be made a little more user friendly for the vast majority of people (a principle in alignment with the democratic drives behind the wiki community). Anyone know an easy way to find a new extension? No, the Martix broke down two years ago and no one has fixed it. We have wikimedia commons, that awesome site of millions of images, that can be embedded into any Mediawiki site -- why can't here there be a special page on every wiki that shows new extensions? Special: Version is a great page, but why can't it be more insightful? Maybe listing extensions that need to be updated (I think there's old out dated extension that tried to do this) and one day also allowing for the update to happen at the push of a button. Sent from my iPad > On Dec 6, 2015, at 12:43 PM, Tyler Romeo <[email protected]> wrote: > > Just wanna say that it's unfair to group Composer into that. I understand the > difficult of multi-platform support (specifically throwing node.js and other > things into the mix), but Composer is just, at it's base, a PHP file manager. > > Any extension that can "only be installed with Composer", can actually be > installed without Composer. You can manually copy the extension files into > the proper location, or you can even just run Composer locally and then > upload the result. (I'm pretty sure we have a tool that gives you a > pre-packaged tarball.) It's significantly better than other PHP solutions > like PEAR. > > -- > Tyler Romeo > https://parent5446.nyc > 0x405D34A7C86B42DF > > From: Francis Franck <[email protected]> > Reply: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list > <[email protected]> > Date: December 6, 2015 at 10:23:25 > To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list > <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [MediaWiki-l] What PHP version do you use? (Chris Koerner) > > I fully agree with David Shaw. > I just posted the following: > > Why, oh why is this environment getting so complex for users who have no >> terminal access to their server? Or am I the only one? >> >> Many extensions can only be installed via Composer. VisualEditor requires >> Parsoid. And so on. It's made impossible for us to stay up to date. Maybe >> users like myself are just a minority, but it is still a pity. Especially >> so because up to a year ago it all seemed so promising. >> > Kind regards, > > Francis > > >> On Sun, Dec 6, 2015 at 5:14 PM, David Shaw <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> I concur with those who mention the difficulty of upgrading. I'm running >> MW 1.26.0 in a single-click installation on AWS. >> >> Other products I use -- including open source -- have a graceful and >> online update process. >> >> MW is built by developers for developers. I'm not a developer and every >> time I upgrade I'm scared. It's a fraught exercise. >> >> I have a few things that don't work, and I have no idea why. For >> example, file uploads stopped working somewhere along the way but I >> don't know when exactly. I didn't change file permissions; although I've >> fiddled with them endlessly since. I suspect it's something in the base >> AWS stack, but what? [Permissions seem to be an area of discussion with >> different falvours of Linux.] >> >> I would like to install Parsoid (why isn't it in the base install?) but >> nobody can offer insight into how to install it at docroot when you only >> have docroot access. I hired a Linux pro to help with that one and he >> threw his hands up. [Installation is easy, but how do you start it up >> automatically?] >> >> Why is the mobile frontend an add-on and not the default? It's 2015... >> >> Quite a few extensions have gone to a DevOps approach of continuous >> development and release, but how do I know when to update them? There is >> no online notifiction. >> >> All of these and more point to the legacy and Dev nature of MW. >> >> David >> >>> On 05/12/2015 7:00 AM, [email protected] wrote: >>> Re: What PHP version do you use? (Chris Koerner) >> >> -- >> *David Shaw pmp, pcip* >> Senior Management Consultant | Information Architect >> 1.613.809.4793 >> Public key: 0xACB98DF4 >> >> Connect on my YouTube tutorials: >> Information management Tutorials >> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCppqnKc2XzjRIcUltgo1GRw> >> >> Connect on LinkedIn & my IM/KM Blog: >> Information management >> <http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=6097601&trk=tab_pro> >> www.kontentsu.blogspot.com/ >> >> Connect on Facebook & my Trawler Blog: >> Trawlers >> <https://www.facebook.com/david.shaw.3994885?ref=ts> >> www.bluewater-trawlers.blogspot.ca/ >> _______________________________________________ >> MediaWiki-l mailing list >> To unsubscribe, go to: >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l >> > _______________________________________________ > MediaWiki-l mailing list > To unsubscribe, go to: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l > _______________________________________________ > MediaWiki-l mailing list > To unsubscribe, go to: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list To unsubscribe, go to: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
